20. Home Secretary, I fully accept that
you rightly take credit for introducing the Human Rights Act and
getting it through Parliament, and of course now our primary legislation
has been interpreted in a way which is compatible with that Act
and individuals can rely on the convention for their own rights.
But can you in fact tell me, following on what Lady Whitaker asked
you, why do I feel different from Joe Citizen in any way from
last September? Can you give me any way in which in fact it has
affected the individual?
(Mr Straw) It has affected individuals in plenty of
ways but they will vary according to whether or not their particular
rights have been the subject of a degree of violation by a public
authority. As I said, the implementation of the Act was not an
event, it was the beginning of a dynamic process. I did not feel
different when I woke on 2 October any more than did people in
France suddenly felt different when the Fifth Republic was brought
in. I doubt that very much. They may have got excited about it
but they would not necessarily have felt differently. In this
country the process of constitutional change has been very much
evolutionalised. The only reason really why we have not had a
written constitution is because we have had since 1689 a process
of evolutionary change which is sometimes very rumbustious, whereas
every other European country has been through a period of either
very serious conflict by other countries on its territory or civil
war or both, and that inevitably has led to the generation of
explicit statement of how government should operate the context.
As I say, I did not wake up on 2 October feeling particularly
different. I do not think anybody else did, but what I hope is
that over both a relatively short period of three or four years
as well as over a long period people will become more aware of
their rights in respect of the state.

21. And if you are a victim you will feel
more important?
(Mr Straw) Yes, and certainly in terms of what has
happened in the last 20 years, especially since Victim Support
got going, people are becoming more aware of the rights of victims
inside particularly the criminal justice system, and the Human
Rights Act I think helps to give that sense of the importance
of victims a further push.

Chairman

22. Home Secretary, I dare say that the
Act has affected us all in ways of which we are not aware. I dare
say that the National Health Service has thought long and hard
about things like "Do Not Resuscitate" being put into
patients' notes, for example, as a result of the Human Rights
Act, which is not something that we will necessarily all be talking
about but may well impact upon our care when we are in hospital.
Would you accept that it is very important that the rights which
are embodied in this Act should not be so hemmed in by exceptions
and duties and talk of responsibilities that they become devoid
of content because if that happens we are never going to have
a kind of major upheaval in this country in favour of the human
rights culture?
(Mr Straw) I do not think they are hemmed in. The
rights, particularly the core ones, Articles 5, 6, 8, 10, for
example, are necessarily qualified. You could not operate our
society without qualifications and balances between the rights
of individuals and the rights of a community that exist in those
Articles. We could have decided to legislate our own interpretation
of the Convention to say, "We write the Articles", or
to say, for instance, "This is how you interpret this".
We decided not to. We decided to build it into our written law
and I think that is a sensible way to do it.

Mr Thomas

23. I am still not clear about something.
Home Secretary, you have conceded earlier on that implementation
is a process and not an event. I think from what you have said
that you are considering winding up the Human Rights Task Force,
although you have conceded that it has got some sort of continuing
role. Which department in government is going to have the continuing
responsibility, the over-arching responsibility, for ensuring
that this implementation and development is an ongoing process?
(Mr Straw) The Home Office, very clearly. But it is
a cross-government responsibility.

24. So although you are mainstreaming and
encouraging other departments to take it on board, you do retain
an over-arching responsibility?
(Mr Straw) Yes. Obviously the machinery of government
is a matter for the Prime Minister, but you could argue either
way whether this kind of responsibility should be in a big department
of state which has got other direct functions or at the centre.
I am not saying there is one answer to this at all. I would, however,
say that there is no evidence at all that the arrangements we
have had, which are that the responsibility has been one in the
Home Office, has undermined the implementation and I would like
to claim that in practice it has helped it. What you have had
is Mark's unit being responsible for implementation within the
department and across government. At the same time you have had
the rest of the department having to work on how you implement
this Act in detail in, say, immigration, in respect of the Police
Service, in respect of the Security Services and so on. It has
been a very tough lesson and what we have then been able to say
to other departments is, "Look: if it is going to work in
the Home Office, and there are services for which we are responsible
where the issues are more acute than in almost any other area,
and there is potentially a much larger number of cases, then it
can work in your department", so it gives us kind of more
authority.

25. Thank you for that. I was going to ask
you about those public authorities outside Whitehall for which
you are responsible. You mentioned the police, prisons and the
security services. How well has implementation gone in relation
to those authorities?
(Mr Straw) I think pretty well. Certainly we have
not done a detailed research on the extent of knowledge at an
individual level, say, at the level of a police officer, but a
huge amount of work went into it by us in co-operation with ACPO,
the Police Superintendents' Association and the Police Federation.
The police magazines, the Police Review and Police,
contained and continue to contain regular articles about the impact
of the Articles in a separate sense on police work and therefore,
particularly on Article 5 and Article 6. There was discussion
about whether, for example, we knew well in advance of the implementation
of the Act whether the coming into force of the Act would require
there to be full hearings of the evidence before bail was refused
and so on which, as you know, had been a matter before the courts
and which has now been dealt with. The Association of Chief Constables
took a very close interest in it. One of their members, Peter
Neyroud, who is Deputy Chief Constable of West Mercia, has written
a book about the Human Rights Act, so there is a lot of interest
in it as well. Can I just say, Mr Thomas, that I have no doubt
that if you wanted to get a real take on that, you would want
to talk directly to those involved.

Chairman: Which we may well do.

Lord Lester of Herne Hill

26. I would like to ask you one or two questions
about ministerial accountability to Parliament in the context
of section 19 of the Act just to pave the way for my question
so that one sees the context. I think you can claim some paternity
for section 19 which requires ministers to sign compatibility
statements on all primary Bills, a New Zealand idea, a holistic
idea that makes it the responsibility of the three branches of
government and not only of the judges and the executive, so there
is a notion of ministers being accountable to Parliament for pending
legislation, primary in that case, subordinate perhaps as well.
We had a very good experience on the Committee when we were looking
at the Criminal Justice and Police Bill which is being debated,
I see, in the House of Commons at the moment. We had very full
reasons given to this Committee to enable us to scrutinise points
in the Bill that troubled us. The basic general problem is that
at the moment ministerial practice in disclosing reasons for compatibility
statements is very random and haphazard, in the sense that it
depends upon whether issues are raised in debate or not, by whom,
and which minister happens to be there at the time. If one looks
at paragraph 14 of the Home Office Memorandum it sets out the
Government's existing position. What it says is that the best
way of dealing with this is during the debate on policy. It is
sticking to the lines, that, as it were, you wait until the Bill
is in either House and then the point is raised and the minister
then deals with it. It then refers to a curious document, which
is the Guidance to the Department produced by the Cabinet Office,
which has on the front of it a bird that looks like the Liberal
Democrat logo on Viagra, or maybe Ecstasy. In that document in
paragraph 39 it says, "Ministers should give a general outline",
and so on and so forth, and then it suggests that something might
happen in support of legislation. The question I want to put is,
surely now we have a Human Rights Committee this needs to be made
systematic and not arbitrary, in other words should there not
now be a system put in place across Whitehall in which whenever
a government publishes a Bill or a draft Bill the reasons, but
not the legal advice, of the kind that you have given us on the
Bill I mentioned before, are as a matter of standard practice
given either in explanatory notes on the Bill, which applies,
therefore, to all Parliamentarians, or to this Committee in the
first instance so that our legal adviser is able to do his job
properly in drawing our attention to anything that me might wish
to raise with you and, therefore, enable each House of Parliament
to be properly informed. It seems to me that it is unsatisfactory
to leave it to the random and haphazard way at the moment. When
you have answered that may I ask you a similar question about
subordinate legislation?
(Mr Straw) I am in your hands, Lord Lester, in terms
of the questions you ask me. On section 19 I, and a number of
my colleagues, thought that having this arrangement would be a
good idea, I was powerfully in favour of it, as you inferred.
I thought that by the simple device of requiring a minister to
say on the face of a Bill, when he or she presented that Bill
to Parliament that they certified that either the Bill was compatible
or that it was not compatiblethat is quite an important
part of itthat they would themselves individually be required
to apply the Bill, whether or not it was compatible, and it would
concentrate their mind. Then, in turn, the fact that a certificate
appeared on the Bill would help to focus the debate on the human
rights aspect of it. I have thought about what you say and, of
course, we do not have a closed mind on this. I would just like
to put the argument the other way, as to why we have come to this
view. This is not to be dismissed as simply a Cabinet Office document.
The guidance document has been developed by the Cabinet Office
constitution secretariat in coordination with the CRP (EC), the
Constitutional Reform Policy (European Convention) Committee.
It is a Cabinet committee, but in practice it had a great deal
to do with the Task Force and the Home Office. We are generous
sometimes in terms of copyright. I think the point at which people
are able to tease out whether a particular clause in a Bill, say
in this Bill, is or is not compatible in the view of the minister
is when the minister is available for interrogation on the floor
of the House or in a Committee. To go down the road that you suggest
would in practice, I think, I am not certain about this, either
mean that we were repeating what was in the explanatory memorandum,
which says what the Bill does, plus saying, "Well, in our
view it fits in with the Human Rights Act and Articles 3, 5 and
6, we are clear about that", or it would require extensive
disclosure of the legal advice available to ministers, either
directly or indirectly. The first we do already and the second
I am powerfully against. I would not be in favour of it and you
would not get my colleagues in favour of it because it is a long
standing rule that ministers are no more required to disclose
legal advice given to them by law officers than any individual
or corporation has to make available publicly or to any potential
respondent or defendant to an action for the legal advice they
have received. The law protects that very closely by professional
privilege. Quite often with a Bill you can think that something
is going to come up, both in terms of a constitutional issue or
an argumentative issue and it does not. Equally, you find it is
a dog that does not bark and in other parts of the Bill where
you thought the dog was well sedated it suddenly pops up and bites
you. It has to be a matter of debate. You asked about the role
of this Committee. This Committee has an important role, but I
would suggest that its role is not that of a substitute for the
role of a special standing committee examining legislation. The
final arbiter in our system of whether or not a particular part
of a Bill or a Bill is not compatible with the Human Rights Act
is none of us, it is the courts. We could go down the road, as
I understand the French have, by which they have a constitutional
court, and where there is a question a Bill may be submitted in
draft to the constitutional court for them to adjudicate on whether
the Bill as drafted is or is not compatible with the Convention.
They do that in advance of going to the National Assembly. That
is one way of doing it. It would require pretty substantial changes
here, and I am not proposing it. In our system the current arrangements
we have come to are pretty satisfactory because we are open to
argument.

27. Thank you very much for that. Could
I then ask you if you would consider with your colleagues, because
I realise that it is a collective decision, these points, if this
Committee is going to have to extract reasons from the Government
on every Bill and you provide them, as you have very helpfully
provided them, first of all, we will not be asking civil servants
to do more work than they already do because in a well ordered
system, which we have, your advisers will advise you, quite apart
from legal advice, clause by clause on anything that they perceive
to be controversial and why they consider that it is compatible.
It is much more orderly and efficient to provide that material
which is not duplicating and will not deal with legal advice any
more than what your Minister of State, Charles Clarke, when he
came to talk about the Police Bill, was revealing. Surely it is
a complete waste of energy and hopelessly inefficient and random
if we have to extract reasons from ministers, like pulling teeth,
ad hoc on particular Bills, mainly in debates. Your points
about the select committee and the courts, and so on, are they
not beside the point? We are not taking over the role of select
committees or either House of Parliament, we are simply one bit
of machinery, if ministers would rather make these reasons available
to select committee as well as to this Committee or in explanatory
notes to each House of Parliament all of those techniques would
be an orderly way of disclosing reasons. I would be very grateful
if both in relation to primary and subordinate legislation the
Government could think harder about ways of making themselves
more accountable to Parliament and not only to the courts. The
philosophy of your Bill, which I entirely approve of, is to engage
all three branches of Government, and not only courts and the
executive. At the moment the missing player is Parliament, unless
Parliamentarians have the energy and skill to raise the questions
ad hoc. Could those points be thought about?
(Mr Straw) I will certainly think about them. I will
consult colleagues, without making any undertaking about the conclusion
we come to. I have given you what is the currently settled Government
policy. As I have said, one's mind should never be closed on these
issues because we are involved in a developing process. I do not
accept your suggestion that at the moment the process is one that
is tantamount to pulling teeth. I think it is tantamount to slipping
out a plate of false teeth.

28. Could I give you an example. If I stand
up in the House of Lords and ask questions, on the whole I manage
to be sufficiently obsessional to get an answer if the minister
is willing to co-operate. I have seen colleagues, for example
Lord Campbell of Alloway, not one of my political colleagues,
attempting with no success whatever to flush out from the Government
their reasons for a compatibility statement. I find that unhealthy
in a parliamentary democracy. That is why I am pushing you. I
am not speaking only for myself on this issue, I hope I am not.
(Mr Straw) I have not had the same complaint I have
to say. Plenty of times I have it put to me, and I welcome it,
questions about whether particular parts of the Terrorism Bill
or the regulation of the Investigatory Powers Bill or the Political
Party Elections and Referendum Bill, to name three, whether they
are compatible with the Human Rights Act and I have been happy
to provide answers. I think it would be a very poor minister who
did not come, in any event, armed with the answer if the question
was reasonably predictable. I do not accept the premise of what
you are saying, that the current process is random, it is not
random, it is no more random than the process of this Committee
going through the Bill and saying we have questions about this.
Those questions are based on what you and your advisers think
are important. The questions that are raised with us before the
House and the Committee are, again, based on what is thought to
be important. Happily in this country, which is not the case in
some countries, we do have some very energetic and expert non-governmental
organisations. They are ever ready, and it is a very important
part of our constitutional framework, to brief members of Parliament.
Whatever criticisms people may have of me, and they are many,
I do not think anyone criticises me for my lack of respect or
concern about parliamentary process. I am committed to this place
completely and committed to parliamentary accountability. I happen
to think that the degree to which, in practice, we as ministers
are answerable to this place is significantly greater than that
which occurs in many European countries, it really is, and that
is quite right. The Treasury dispatch box is both the greatest
but the loneliest place in the world, particularly if do you not
have the answer, and that too is quite right. I just come back
to your first point, my difficulty is in working out how we can
achieve the end which you, Lord Lester, seek without, in practice,
disclosing the content of the legal advice we have received. I
do not think that would be fair.

Chairman

29. Home Secretary, it is probably right
to say our role is to advise Parliament on Human Rights in a focused
and specialised way. We cannot do that without the measures you
described. I do want to say that the Committee thought the way
in which your Department responded to our questions on the Criminal
Justice and Police Bill was exemplary.
(Mr Straw) We will continue to respond to questions.

30. In order to help us to understand how
your Department deals with compatibility orders if we take an
example, last night the Terrorism Act Proscribed Organisations
Amendment Order went through the House of Commons, I do not want
to go into the merits of that particular order, but could you
explain the process that was involved in framing it to help us
to understand the way in which human rights implications were
taken into account in relation to the policy issues and in relation
to the precise drafting of it?
(Mr Straw) What was passed last night was secondary
legislation and it will be open to any relevant applicant to seek
to have that piece of secondary legislation declared ultra
vires by the court and if it were it would cease to operate,
it is quite separate from the provisions of Section 4 of this
Act in respect of primary legislation. It is secondary legislation.
We have had to apply ourselves as to whether we have felt that
the order which I put forward last night was intra vires
not only the Terrorism Act but also this Act. How do we do it?
It goes back to the drafting of the Act itself. One of the matters
that we were aware of was that it was unlikely that if we kept
to the previous practice, where there was simply a proscription
of an organisation and then an order being passed by Parliament,
that that would be within the provisions of the Human Rights Act.
We were informed in that respect by the decision of the European
Court of Human Rights in the Chahal case, it was not identical,
that was about whether the United Kingdom Government had acted
within the Convention in a national security exclusion. That decision
led directly to the establishment of the Special Immigration Appeals
Commission, which is a body which hears appeals against my decisions
to exclude people who have a right to remain on national security
grounds. We drew that as a model and we proposed in the Terrorism
Bill that there could be a right of appeal against a proscription
order to a body called the Proscribed Organisations Appeal Commission.
It is a process similar to that, the criteria is different, they
are judicial review decisions rather than decisions on the merits.
That is really how we did it. Having got that established then
there was the issue of, was it appropriate for me to propose a
proscription for each of those organisations, and in deciding
proscriptions, as I said last night, I obviously have to apply
some of the evidence, and that is intelligence in the main, which
will have to go before the POAC if there are appeals. I went into
a great deal of detail on the merits. I also had to think about
the implications of Article 10, freedom of expression, and to
some extent Article 8. When, and if, POAC comes to adjudicate
on JR grounds on the decisions that I have made, they will not
just take them on narrow grounds these days of Wednesbury unreasonableness
but they will take them on wider grounds and take into account
the Convention. That was very much in my mind when I was making
those decisions.

Lord Carlisle of Bucklow

31. Can we turn to the courts, I think you
and I probably agree, in the immediate future the real effect
starts with the effect of the Act on the courts, both in its need
to interpret primary legislation in accordance with the Convention
and, secondly, undoubtedly, heightening the awareness of the rights
of individuals who appear before tribunals and courts of all kind.
Have you any evidence yet in the Home Office of what effect the
Act is having in changing any situation? We know in Scotland that
one dramatic effect was it was required to look at the whole way
in which sheriffs work. Have we any similar situations in England?
(Mr Straw) I do not think, speaking from memory, that
aside from the issues raised in Alconbury, which is the
planning case, which is very substantial and on which a decision
is awaited from the Judicial Committee of the House of Lords,
I cannot think of any other case which has had quite such dramatic
effects. I have already given an indication that there has been
no discernible increases in delays in the Crown Court or Magistrates'
courts. There has certainly been, I am told anecdotally, more
argument on bail cases. For a period there was effort made by
some people to argue that in every case where the provision of
bail was challenged then full evidence should be adduced against
the rather informal process that is already being done at the
moment. That is now being dealt with. I have a note here which
says the 204 Human Rights Act challenges surveyed by the Cabinet
Office amount to less than 0.12 per cent of the total cases listed
each month. The pattern of challenges are also becoming clearer,
nearly 60 per cent are based on Article 6, Fair Trials, and 18
per cent on Article 8, Right to Private and Family Life. The challenges
rely on other conventional rights but they are very small in number.
I should say, however, we are obviously seeing quite a number
of human rights challenges in the field of immigration law and
that was bound to be the case both under Article 8, and occasionally
under Article 3. The other one was the interpretation of what
was Section 2 of the Crime Sentencing Act about exceptional circumstances.

32. In criminal trials, which are now taking
challenges under Article 6, these were originally taken as abuse
of process objections in any event, so there has not been a vast
increase.
(Mr Straw) If you wanted better evidence than I can
give you need to ask people like David Calvert-Smith, the Director
of Public Prosecutions and the Criminal Bar Association. So far,
as I say, we think it has lead to more argument. There was some
anxiety by some magistrates about the initial effects. I have
had fewer and fewer anecdotal reports to me, but it is still early
days, it is only four or five months.

Mr Maclennan

33. Home Secretary, do you agree that it
is really part of the purpose of incorporating the Convention
to seek to diminish rather than increase the occasions in which
our citizens actually have to litigate about these matters and
that, really, our procedures ought to be targeting ways of diminishing
the likelihood of legislation particularly, which is what we are
so heavily concerned with, leading to challenges in the court?
If you take that view, which I rather suspect you might, would
it not assist that process to have a procedure whereby those issues
which look, on the face of them, to be controversial in a human
rights kind of context could be dealt with in a sense before the
Bill is enacted and not on the basis of what may happen to be
raised with the responsible minister by a particular member of
a standing committee on a particular day? If in your answer to
Lord Lester about the Government's settled policy on this the
concern is about the revelation of the legal advice which has
been given to the Government, can that not be simply circumvented
by the explanatory memorandum, or whatever method is advanced
by the Government to set out its views on these knotty questions
being given the ministerial imprimatur, which means that the judgment
is one resting on the political judgment of the legal issues by
the Government and not the technical, if you like, arguments which
have been filtered through ministers? It seems to me the reason
for coming back to this issue is really it so much effects the
way this Committee will have to do its work. We can obviously
get around this by doing the job of asking all of the questions
ourselves, but that would just put it at
(Mr Straw)I certainly said that I will think about.
I do not think it will circumvent a rule which is essential for
the proper functioning of any institution and that legal professional
privilege applies to legal advice, simply by saying that the minister
takes off the attorney's name or that of the Legal Secretariat
to the Law Officers and sticks his name on it. What you can have
is statements of the kind that we provided to you under this Bill
which said, "This is what we are doing and we happen to think
that it is compliant with Article 5(1) and Article 6(1)",
and be assertive rather than argumentative. There is then the
question of, is that simply stating the obvious, because if the
ministers have an explanatory memorandum and the minister signs
a certificate it is perfectly obvious if it is to do with the
criminal process it is going to be Article 5 or Article 6 normally,
it may be Article 8. I am sorry that time is short, can I just
pick you up on your point about the random test, which goes back
to what Lord Lester said, you could describe the way in which
the common law has developed as random, because people go to court
sometimes on all sorts of rather eccentric points and from those
great law is developed. To take one example which every first
year law student will remember, the Carbolic Smoke Ball Company.
I doubt very much when the people who were putting together the
advertisement for the Carbolic Smoke Ball Company they ever thought
they would be not only selling some quack idea and making some
money out of it, which was obviously the purpose, but they would,
many decades and centuries later, see it becoming part of our
living law. That was a pretty fly-by-night idea and somebody who
was offended by it did not have to go to courtthey could
have just shrugged, probably as most people did, when the remedy
did not workbut decided to and great law follows from it.
Was that random? I do not think it was, it was about an individual
asserting their rights. If you have a living law, which we do,
then the points which are developed will not necessarily be anticipated
in advance. What I am suggesting is that the equivalent to having
Parliament, which is through the dialectical process by argument
and debate, where people are concerned, is a very important part
of that process. I am not saying push it away, what you and Lord
Lester are proposing, but I am saying that that ought to be at
the core of it.

Chairman: In the very short time available
to us, Home Secretary, I have two more questions that would like
to be asked.

Mr Miller

34. How many challenges so far have been
taken under the HRA against your own Department or it agencies
to which you are responsible?
(Mr Straw) I do not have the number in my head. Most
of the points taken will affect the Police, the Crown Prosecution
Service, the Attorney and the Immigration Service of a decision
which I have made directly. We have a schedule made of cases which
have come up. There are quite a substantial number of asylum appeals
and we recognised that prospect by the change that we made in
the appeal system, which was built into the 1999 Immigration and
Asylum Act. We will provide as much information as we can.

Mr Thomas

35. There is a huge amount of interest in
whether or not there should be a Human Rights Commission, can
you tell us what the current thinking of Government is on that?
(Mr Straw) The current thinking is that Government
remains to be convinced on that. A question that I would go back
to is, what would it do? That is a big question. It could merge
the EOC and the CRE, that is one of the things you could do. That
was the old idea of the Human Rights Commission. There is an argument
in favour of that, although it is not one I am in favour of. We
have a discrete choice. It could be there as a litigator, but
I think that has the disadvantage of shuffling off the responsibility
for human rights. Or it can replicate what this body is doing.
I need to see, as it were, a better argument in favour of the
Human Rights Commission, other than the idea that it is a nice
warm idea that might do something. I am not sure that it would.
The argument is there and we will look at it.

Mr Browne

36. Home Secretary, this question is a hybrid
question, the number of challenges that would be in the field
of immigration, crime or prisons are probably entirely predictable,
that is what happened in Scotland earlier, and then here, but
a better barometer of whether people are taking ownership of this
Human Rights Agenda is the number of cases where the Act has had
an impact in civil cases. Is there any indication that that is
increasing and, if so, is it indicating that people are taking
ownership? The second one comes back to the Section 19 statement,
this is a fairly basic question, whatever the genesis of the Convention
that the Government should threat legal advice in the same way
as an individual can it certainly did not develop at a time when
Government had a statutory duty to legislate in a way that is
compatible with an international convention. The final point is
this, is the Government not in a way actually revealing the advice
by a Section 19 statement but just not revealing the reasoning
behind the statement?
(Mr Straw) First of all, there is no statutory duty
for us to legislate in a manner which is consistent with the Convention,
none at all. One can think of possible circumstances where a declaration
of incompatibility had been made by the Judicial Committee or
the Privy Council and Government and Parliament had decided to
accept that. Down the track the Government might decide, it would
be wise to get Parliament's approval for this. Or it would simply
wait until a challenge was made in the European Court of Human
Rights and it might then decide that the circumstances were so
dire that they would have to enter a derogation from a particular
Article, like Article 5 under the Prevention of Terrorism. It
is an important part of all this. We are not required to legislate
in this way, although I happen to think it is extremely desirable.
In every Act I put before the House I have to be sure I am satisfied.
The second point is, is it not tantamount to disclosing the conclusion
of the Law Officers when a Section 19 certificate is signed. Well,
you can have a pretty good guess as what the Attorney's conclusions
were, but the certificate is the minister's and it is the minister
who is signing it. As everyone here will know there are plenty
of occasions when lawyers will say on one hand or the other you
may want to take a chance on this or take a chance on that. If
you happen to be a minister, as I am, who is argumentative and
interested in the law then you may go back two or three times.
I have not done that on a Bill but I have done it on some other
issues and said, "We need to look at this a bit more and
that a bit more". Then you can say, "Personally I am
satisfied about this, having looked at it". It is about a
personal statement. There is a world of difference when a big
corporation goes into a court on a big case where they must stand
to win or lose a lot of money it is a fair bet that they are acting
on the advice of their lawyers and they are agreeing with their
lawyers' advice. What they do not have to disclose is why. If
they had to disclose it they would be offering a large part of
their argument to the other side, including all sorts of weak
bricks that the other side might not spot, and that would be more
dangerous. I have given you an overall figure, 204, of human rights
cases. The key one is Alconbury. There is an interesting
horizontal case, Wilson and the First County Trust, where the
Court of its own motion is considering the proportionality of
a section of the Consumer Credit Act against money lenders who
made technical errors in the credit paperwork. Then there is Ashdown
and the Telegraph Group, where the Court, it says here, "effortlessly
endorsed the Copyright and Patent Act as compatible". I think
these, as it were, third party actions between civil parties,
of which the Government is not a party, will be very interesting.

Chairman

37. I do not suppose that anyone thought
that the first case could involve a lady who got her BMW and her
money back. Home Secretary, can I thank for appearing before us
today. It is entirely appropriate you should be the first Cabinet
minister to appear before us given your responsibility for the
Human Rights Act. Can I also thank Mr Pulford and Miss Sinclair
and the officials you brought with you to assist the Committee.
(Mr Straw) Thank you very much.